#When a warmup sketch becomes a doodle

[sugarsweetvirgo]

Thinking about the new Minecraft x Lush set… 💜🛁🖤

[didderd]

☕ Do you do warmup sketches before drawing? (Bonus: do you have any to share?)

🐻 Your go-to things to draw when you need comfort?

🎁 Do you prefer drawing fandom stuff or your own characters?

🌊 What’s the hardest thing for you to draw? 

🙊 Share your latest silly doodle with no context

☕ yeah sometimes. i should do it more, but i often end up getting distracted with my warmup drawings, and they become more than warmups kgfjbn

here, i think a few of these were intended as warmups:

some bitty twitchies ft. Scar by @/skelekins (and Snaps) also Kil by @/smokbeast (and my sona) 🐻 (answered here) 🎁 fandom stuff, but nowadays usually my own variants/ocs in fandoms. (my only original sans i have a good handful of drawings of already, but i wanna get the ref out before i start posting his doodles (like i'm doing with the twitchy sanses that aren't out)) 🌊 mechanics i think. stuff like that that's detailed and aren't interesting to look at/fun to draw. it's hard and i lose motivation fast. 🙊

:3

[art-by-reed]

Completely unsolicited art advice :3

Draw what you see, not what you think is there

This means when you're drawing from life, be aware that your brain is telling you different information to your eyes. And what you wanna draw is what your *eyes* see.

You see this table? Can you see all four of it's legs? No. Make sure your brain doesn't trick you into drawing the fourth leg - you know it's there, but you *can't see it* right now. If you draw the fourth leg, you'll be distorting the perspective of your image, and it won't look as natural as the camera does.

You see this still life? When you draw or paint your still lifes, make sure you only draw what you see. If you get the curve of the underside of that pear wrong, you might end up giving the viewer a glimpse of the wall, the gap between pear and jug. That's not what you see. Don't draw it. Rub it out and re-draw the curve of the pear til you've *drawn what you see*.

Draw what makes you happy

For me that meant fanart. You won't practise enough if you only have a passing interest in drawing. Drawing for the sake of improving your skills can be a weak motivator, and depressing cause it's really hard to see your own progress and you'll be drawing inspiration from more experienced artists. You should draw your otp, draw your crush, draw anything that makes you feel something.

You don't need to make finished pieces

Doodle in the margains of your schoolbooks. Draw eyes. Draw anime boys. Get yourself a sketchbook that you don't show people, where you can just draw freely without worrying about it being good. Just draw. Don't apply pressure to be perfect.

Does Usain Bolt get out of bed, step onto his private running track, and sprint at full speed immediately? No, he needs a warmup. He won't even be able to *reach* full speed every day. Your art might sometimes feel like it's worse than before. Individual pieces might be worse than previous pieces, but you yourself will not be a worse artist than before. You just need a warmup.

I've gone months without drawing and then drawn absolute crap lmao. Don't let it get you down

Don't fiddle with a finished piece

Every single piece I've posted to social media, I've found a flaw with, even if it took me months to notice. Remember you're always getting better, so when you look back at a piece you will be looking with a sharper artistic eye than when you finished it. Resist the temptation to take down your art and edit it; you'll be doing that every 6 months for the rest of your life. Let it stand as part of your journey, and make a note to do better in your next piece.

No-one sees your art like you do

No-one sees the mistakes until they spend as much time staring at it as you have. What they see is the initial impact of the piece, whatever that is. The striking colour, the movement, the emotion, whatever the focus is. You often become blind to the most striking element of your work after working on it so long.

Bonus tips:

Practise gesture drawing. Just lightning quick sketches of the human body. Draw and move on. Do it today, do it now. Get off tumblr and find a pencil. Here's a website that'll help you:

https://quickposes.com/en

Adjust your screen settings so what you're seeing is what a normal screen would see; often digital tablets have brighter colours than a laptop or phone.

Get outside your comfort zone. It sucks, but just do it. You'll find you have transferable skills; it won't be as bad as you think.

Don't underprice your commissions. Figure out how long you spend on each kind of drawing, and give yourself at *least* minimum wage for the time spent. You're not only doing yourself a disservice; you're undercutting prices for the rest of the community. You're an artist now. Act like one.

And finally, if you love art, don't worry if you'll make it. There is no "talent" to art. The reason some people make it and some don't is because those people love what they do. No baby is born able to draw. Each and every one of your favourite artists used to be so goddamn bad at drawing. They're good now cause they loved it enough to persevere.

Love you. Keep going. I can't wait to see what you'll make!

Go do gesture drawing

[bmpmp3]

i guess “wobbly” isn’t totally the right way to describe what’s going on with my art, a better descriptor might be a sort of “double vision” created through an inevitability turned into an intentionality

(sorry im very sick rn and my sick brain accidentally wrote some barely readable essay about my own artistic techniques orz under da cut)

i think a large part of the reason i gravitate towards drawing analogue vs digital nowadays (ignoring the fact that i have spatial issues and i can keep track of proportions much easier on paper than on a screen) is that like, at least in my experience (growing up on deviantart LOL) traditional art, while being less popular online (at least, growing up on deviantart it was), also allowed way more room for visual mistakes and imperfections than digital art did. i think sometimes, at least for me, having an undo button ended up putting a weird perfectionism on me instead of being a useful tool orz

YOU MAY have noticed my double/triple lines in my linework, especially in long, uninterrupted lines, that’s what i mean by inevitability turned intentionality: its a sort of “line correction” like one would do when doing a rough sketch except for some ungodly reason i do it during my very permanent inking stage LOL jk jk its actually several very good reasons: you know how many artists find their rough sketches look better than their final linework? part of that is because your eyes bring in all the competing sketchy lines together as one cohesive sort of “vibe” of a line, making it look exactly how your brain thinks it should look to be “correct”

another reason is that, going back to the spatial issues, the dysgraphia is inevitable and i will always end up strange, jerky lines no matter the sketch stage or the ink stage, no matter how careful i am no matter how careless, its something that’s stuck with me for 24 years and i can usually write my b’s and d’s without a reference nowadays (the z’s are still questionable) but it’s always present - SO i’ve found, especially in the past couple years, embracing it is vital

hold on, here’s some examples of my double lines:

THIS drawing around the legs is a REALLY clear example lol

you can see what happened, the red lines are what i attempted to draw first, my dysgraphia then caught up to me half way through bringing in those big wobbles, and then i added the blue lines as a sort of corrective buffer

this one had a LOT, the orange lines were likely what were drawn first. you can kind of tell that i tend to ink from the face first because as i get to the body i get more tired and the more corrective lines need to be drawn LOL

of course there’s exceptions: i think with this girl I hadn’t done any warmup sketching (just drawing vague circles and swirls and lines or maybe a blobby creature doodle LOL) and my hands were hashtag unsteady hjdskfjds

of course when i said inevitiability turned intentionality, i do mean that part of it is done intentionally: on purpose. that’s part of embracing it: it really does just look good and feel good to draw like this. like here i can’t remember or tell which lines were drawn first, i just know it felt right where i placed all my doublelines

i think that’s why i had to stop doing digital art for a while, it tends to not be super conducive to this style of drawing, or at least i haven’t quite gotten the hang of it (despite doing digital art since i was 10 LOL). i remember like 90% of the stuff i would draw digitally, instead of letting my doublelines through i would just ctrl+z and redraw the line 3000000 times until it was “perfect” orz a fools errand that created way more work for myself and was nawt great for my drawing health (both physically and mentally very exhausting). i hope someday i can work out some techniques im happy with that make digital art feel as easy as analogue art has become for me

my chosen medium for colouring in traditonal art also helps i think, i originally gravitated towards watercolour because it was faster and easier on the hands than pencil crayons (especially as a person with this many ocs with black and brown hair LOL my pencil crayons were STUBS while the other colours were nearly untouched) but it also allows for you to get SLOPPY with it LOL painting outside the lines feels SO good and right and not painful WOULD RECOMMEND. plus, i think you can see it in my drawing of Su up there with her brown hair, because to build up deeper colours in watercolour i find it easiest to do it in layers + i cant mimic the brushstrokes very easily, i end up with these sort of simple gradations around all my drawings which i think has a similar i-liked-the-rough-sketch-best effect that the doublelines have, the weird aura tricks the brain into filling in the blanks

of course my lineart style is not super conducive for digital art colouring, paintbucket filling this shit is a NIGHTMARE jkgdfldsjhfkds that’s another thing i gotta do a lot of experimentation with..............

anyway WHAT im trying to say is sometimes the best thing you can do for your art is let your arms draw the way they want to. (also im tricking your eyes into seeing the best version of my art with my fuzzy colouring and double-lined inking. bmpmp3′s trick hee hee)

[sysig]

It doesn’t seem to respond to yelling

[arpad5421970]

Week 5 - Studio tutorial

In Week 5 we talked about the importance of freehand sketching and the visualisation of early ideas via these techniques. The activity required us to initially do a warmup routine and after which do some actual sketching of our own for another subject, Studio 1B.

The first warmup exercise required us to try to draw lines as straight as we can. It was suggested that we use a pen, so I used it through the majority of the drawing exercises.

After that we had to arrange dots at random areas of the sheet and try to connect them with one attempted line.

The 3rd exercise required us to draw a bunch of circles and after it fill them with ellipses.

The 4th exercise required us to draw a straight line in the middle, put our vanishing points on either end and construct a series of cubes floating in that space.

These exercises were quite useful and during the mid class break, I decided to doodle some sketches of a car that I came up with on the spot, and I was instructed by one of the tutors to post it in my weekly post, as it fit the theme of sketching for the weeks activity, so here they are.

After the warmup exercises I began to draw out the 12 rectangles and filled them with quick ideas for what could be my perfume bottle. I decided my emotion to be 'surprised', so I came up with the idea that the cap becomes the cover for the entire bottle and when removed its not what you expect, contributing to the surprise emotion.

After that I drew the rectangle in perspective as we learned in one of our previous lessons, and then drew in the covered state of the perfume bottle. Overall I felt a lot more motivated in class this lesson, which I would say is visible in the quality of the drawings, but it was still a fun to practise sketching.

[levia-san]

I love your doodles, they looked like you put good amount of effort tho

You know, you ever saw a good sketch or doodle but they called it a warmup

👀🙏💯 I wished that my doodles would look like that

I really like your Chibis! You can draw a character very cute and draw them looking cool. I can't help but looking at how you draw the eyes. ❤️

Haha thanks! Although if you're referring to the painted "doodles", I must say they're more the exception, since my doodles tend to be more sketched than painted. Still glad you enjoy them! yes, it's especially a thing w japanese artists I think? But I can understand, sometimes when you draw you don't think much when drawing so it doesn't feel like more than a doodle. Doodles sure have a range.... And aw thanks! ToT Chibis are always hard, since they can become uncanny so fast but really happy you like them

[thesparklingblue]

Odd question but how long does it take you to draw something digitally? I tried to draw digitally but I become such a perfectionist I never finish anything bc it doesn’t look perfect. 

Hello! :)

It depends. For starters, I don't consider myself a fast artist and sometimes, especially when I'm having a bad day, drawing a single headshot can take me an hour. Other times, when I'm feeling particularly happy and inspired, the same headshot can be done in 30 minutes or less.

Try to sketch freely for a while every day. Warmups and doodles always help to loosen up. Also, from one perfectionist to another, worrying so much about a single piece is pointless. We only improve our skills with lots and lots of practice, so don't waste your precious time editing a drawing while there are hundreds more waiting for you.

[applecoreart]

--Really needed to hear this right now. I’ve avoided sketchbooks for a long time because of the ‘pressure to perform,’ but this year I really want to do more studies and practice work, as well as dabble in new subjects, techniques, and mediums, rather than feeling pressured to always crank out finished pieces to ‘fill a portfolio.’ Finally overcoming my sketchbook stigma will, I think, really help me loosen up and learn more in the long run, as well as explore and regain that sense of fun art should have, but often loses when it becomes your job.

Also, a helpful revelation I had recently that may help others reading this-- I always saw what other people put in their sketchbooks (the subjects, the style of how they filled it, the energy and flow, and the skill levels) and while I admired it, it also super demotivated me somehow from sketching and doodling and practicing more. Over time, it just became worse and worse until recently I couldn’t find the zeal to make art at all. Like scary ‘what’s the point?’ level of bad.

Thankfully I had an ‘epiphany’ moment where I realized I don’t have the same art goals as the artists I was watching/following, so by design I’m not going to fill my sketchbook the same way or do the same warmups or studies they do. You train for the area you’re in, you work with the materials you want to improve in, and you study the subjects you want to become knowledgeable in. You’re not going to become a psychology major by taking classes in accounting. Sounds obvious, but why as artists do we keep falling into that ‘maybe I should make what other people are making’  trap?

Also, there’s an old saying that if you fall out of love with something, go back and do the thing that caused you to fall in love in the first place. Remind yourself, recall it to your memory, of what caused that initial spark of passion and excitement. For me, it was doing studies of screencaps from film and animation, printing out references from BTAS and anime throughout gradeschool, duplicating them as best I could to try and capture the amazing emotions they evoked in me, seeing how the pros handled each shot, and analyzing the designs and colors, because animation is my goal.

It’s no wonder watching art videos of portrait artists and landscape painters doing sketchbook tours was so demotivating to me. Gorgeous art, amazing to watch, but the thought of filling up my sketchbook like them made all my creativity shrivel up completely, because it’s not my style or goal. So yeah, long story short, moral of the story-- ask yourself what your goals are, what kind of artist you want to be, and what you need to do to get there, and DO THAT. And if you’ve fallen out of love with your art or the process of art in general, remind yourself of how you first fell in love and revisit that if at all possible.

For me, it’s going to be doing more screencap studies of film and animation, and the thought of revisiting that process I started back as a kid first falling in love with animation, all the emotions that nostalgia evokes, has me more excited about art than I’ve felt in a long time.

Hope this helps someone out there and happy creating, -ink

[pinktatertots99]

☕️ 🐻 🌗 (ignore the lollipop one)

ksdfjklsfjlksdkl well i’ll least mention it love, afterall some might wanna know hehe so your okay love.

🌼Artist Ask meme!🌼

☕ Do you do warmup sketches before drawing? (Bonus: do you have any to share?) i used to with the paintbrush but not anymore. sometimes maybe i’ll doodle faces or small stuff involving ocs to see if they look good. unfortunately i don’t have any i’ve done recently cause i usually crop em out by the end of it or they become the final product. i will share a doodle dump though:

🐻 Your go-to things to draw when you need comfort? oof. uhm hmmmm, idk if it’s comfort but i usually draw things i’ve wanted to draw and do. like some of my bortz drawings or gem aus tbh. otherwise i usually just do vent arts which involve me crying...alot, and stabbing my heart and brain cause anxiety is a real bitch. i guess one that was considered comfort was an air vent-ing- art i did to the song melty land nightmare covered by rachie. it’s kinda hard though re-listening to that song without feeling sad or personally attacked.

🌗 Is night or day better for drawing? probably daytime tbh i don’t do a whole lot of drawing at night but i do draw randomly.

and i’mma just answer this for anyone curious.

🍭 What’s your main art blog / what do you tag your art with? i don’t have an art blog but my art tag is ‘i made this’. but specific art i sometimes use a buncha tags from a fandom i’m in, or least try to i need to go back and re-tag alot of old stuff.

[ask-bolthead-crew]

Hey,really out of the blue,sorry,but do you have any tips how to keep drawing when im never even remotely happy with what i draw?I get the urge to draw something all the time but when i have a pencil in hand and a paper in front of me i just freeze,i get so terrified because i know its not gonna come out the way i want it to so i just dont,i dont draw anymore even though i want to,and i want to improve my art and do things but i just cant get over the wall. Sorry to bother, feel free to ignore

// So the first thing to remember is that you are DEFINITELY not the only one.Art is hard, especially when you're not happy with what you're doing. I feel that way a LOT. Another thing to keep in mind is that a bad drawing never killed anyone.Sometimes you have to make a schedule for yourself... one you get past those first couple of hurdles of thinking "this sucks," it becomes a lot easier.I'm not saying you have to be proud of everything you do. In fact, it's the complete opposite. For every good drawing you do, there will be about 100 fuck ups. There's this strange expectation we put on ourselves that everything we do has to be good, and honestly it's an unrealistic expectation.What you CAN do, however, is just get into the habit of forcing yourself to do it... even if it's just a few doodles a week.What I do is I have specific characters I'll doodle as a warmup... they're my go-to guys. Kid, Killer, Heat, and Wire are four of them... But I also have my own character, Muffler, that I'll use.These become go-tos for trying out new things or getting back into the swing of drawing. They're characters/things/whatever that you eventually feel comfortable enough drawing from memory and can draw anywhere.The biggest thing is creating a no-judgement zone for yourself. If you don't feel comfortable drawing, you won't. Simple as that. Once you allow yourself to mess up, or make some bad drawings, it becomes more like second nature. Every drawing you make is a step towards bettering your skill. Think of it as a tool, not a finished product. If you get frustrated, don't tear out the page and throw it away or scribble it out. Turn the page or go to a blank area and start again. Allow each drawing to breathe and exist, even if it looks like crap to you. You never know if it might spark an idea at a later point in time, and even if it doesn't, it becomes a record of how far you've progressed... and trust me, you want those.I understand how difficult letting go of that judgement can be. It's similar to writing- just allow yourself to vomit images onto a page first. Don't go into anything thinking, "This is the end-all-be-all, and will be a completed image." Life doesn't really work that way. I'll sometimes redraw sketches for asks three times before I finally go, "fuck it- good enough."The finished pieces will come later, and chances are you won't even recognize it when it's a solid work of art until like... a week after you force yourself to be done with it... especially because, as artists, we're forced to stare at the damn thing until we drive ourselves crazy.Learning when to call something done was also really difficult for me. What I started doing was, once I got to a point where I would make changes and then immediately erase them/try to fix them, I called it done. I'll leave you with something my mentor told me about a year ago:Art for me is not a passion. I don't LOVE making art. In fact, most of the time I'll look at something I've done and go, "wow this is garbage."Art is an addiction. I don't do it because I like it... I do it because I HAVE to. If I go too long without drawing, I feel physically (and mentally) ill. I get depressed and restless. It's these times when it's even harder to pick it back up again. Sometimes I wish I could be content working at a computer for a company. Unfortunately, that's just not how my brain is programmed.But sometimes you just get the strength to push through that block, and you will make some pretty incredible stuff eventually. It just a lot of mental gymnastics and a WHOLE lot of understanding and allowing yourself to make those 100 bad drawings before you make that one good one.You'll get there, I promise. It sometimes just takes looking at things from a different perspective.

[thalia-amongst-the-thorns]

Artist Ask Meme

From this post, curtesy of @all-made-of-stardust

🖍️ When did you start drawing? Do you remember?  

Oh lord, ages ago, I was that kid who doodled on ever homework assignment and in the margins of notebooks since middle school. I think the oldest picture I still have is from when I was 12 or so?

✏️ Do you prefer traditional art or digital to relax?  

I used to exclusive do traditional art until around 2012-13, at which point I pulled a 180 and now basically only work digitally; I enjoy the convenience of instantly coloring, different textured brushes, and of course an undo button.

📏 What’s your go-to canvas size?

Usually big, 1600x1200 or more (which is a relative big compared to other artists out there).

☕ Do you do warmup sketches before drawing? (Bonus: do you have any to share?)

Usually I start out working on a pic that I intend to be the finally piece; give it 30 minutes or so and I eventually become so frustrated with the pose/composition that I abandon it and start over, so technically it’s a warm-up sketch, yeah? Sometimes I do intentional sketches to get a rough idea of designs though

🙃 Which is easier: faces facing left, right, or front view?

Faces facing left all the way.

📚 How many layers do you typically use?

Three; rough base sketch, line art, colors. Maybe four if I want to get crazy and try some fancy shading or effects.

🐻 Your go-to things to draw when you need comfort?

People/faces; I like playing around with facial structure and hair to get across character and personality. 

🎁 Do you prefer drawing fandom stuff or your own characters?

My own characters all day every day, I’ve only drawn fandom stuff a handful of times. 

🌈 Do you use more warm or cold colors?

Warm? Maybe? I think I’m just really fond of primary colors.

🎼 Your favorite music to draw to right now?

Actually, drawing time is when I finally get a chance to catch up on my backlog of podcasts (currently catching up on The Adventure Zone, The Penumbra Podcast, and Fireside Mystery Theatre)

🙌 Draw a doodle with your non-dominant hand

Urrrhhhh, bit tied up at the moment but have a messy doodle instead

📐 Whats your favorite kinds of lines to draw?

Lots of little sketchy lines that add movement (not necessarily��clarity).

💐 Do your drawing suit your aesthetics?

Look dude, I barely know what my own aesthetic is, though I think this might be better answered from an unbiased/outside perspective.

🦋 Do your drawings resemble you?

I... don’t think so? Again, might be better answered by a third party, though now that I think about it a lot of artists do kind of resemble their style... which is a trip to contemplate...

(sometimes I do draw myself though ;))

✨ How often do you draw?

Not as often as I like (like, once a week if that).

🌗 Is night or day better for drawing?

Whenever I have time, but day is better in terms of just not being exhausted from my day job.

🍭 What’s your main art blog / what do you tag your art with?

Right here, usually tagged with “my art”

🍀 You wish your art was more..(fill in the blank)

Expressive, balanced, clean, proportioned, dynamic--

🌊 What’s the hardest thing for you to draw?

Not people.

but I try to branch out

🙊 Share your latest silly doodle with no context

[musesmilk]

JULIE BENBASSAT

It is hard to believe Julie Benbassat is just a sophomore student at RISD. Benbassat’s work is sophisticated beyond her years, and we expect she will be dominating the illustration world in no time. 

“I was lucky that a lot of people supported my decision to go to art school (my parents, my teachers, my friends and acquaintances), so I only got a little taste of the obnoxious people who thought all artists starved.”

Muse’s Milk: Tell us your story.

Julie Benbassat: To put it bluntly, I was raised by a really cute Jewish, elderly white couple, both being nearly 50 when they adopted me from China. Since I was only a baby when I was adopted, I didn't retain any of the culture or customs from China. To avoid becoming culturally illiterate, my parents tried taking me to Chinese school, reading me Chinese stories and moving us to a diverse area in New Jersey. As a kid I had my parents teaching me the fundamentals of Judaism and folk music while my Chinese American friends and their families helped me reconnect with my birth country. 

I think this combination had a lasting impression on me. I see it in my work from time to time (fusing Asian aesthetics with Jewish and American thought processes). 

In terms of education, I went to a good public school system. My high school art program was pretty good in comparison to most of the other schools around us. I was lucky that a lot of people supported my decision to go to art school (my parents, my teachers, my friends and acquaintances), so I only got a little taste of the obnoxious people who thought all artists starved. 

MM: Can you speak about your illustration process? How you approach personal assignments vs. client work? 

JB: My process has been constantly changing, and continues to change as I go further into my college years. I've noticed I really need to make a lot of sketches before I make a final product, whether it be client work or personal work. This isn't necessarily because I need a ton of reference shots, but rather because it serves as a warmup to stretch my thinking and creative muscles. Client work actually comes easier because the client has a vision, so I can ask them what they want. Personal work is harder but more enjoyable when the finished product is done. Normally a personal piece takes longer than a client piece (depending on the client's project though) just because I end up sketching so much. I’m trying to get faster at this, and college has really helped me speed up, so I can only wonder what my process will be like in senior year. 

MM: What are you passionate about right now, and why? 

JB: Throughout my life I've been passionate about girl power and nature in general. This probably has to do with my upbringing. My Mom and Dad are both solid feminists and nature lovers. I try to work these interests into my art, though I'm constantly learning more about each respective topic. Some mornings I find myself just going out to the local plants and sketching them cause they're so magical, or reading about famous women in history on free days. Sorry if I sound like a super feminist plant nerd. And shockingly, I'm very passionate about tea, as it is my life source. I decided to do a daily drawing challenge in 2015, where I made a tea doodle (teadle) everyday. 

MM: Is there anything you want the audience to know about you?

JB: I think I've spilled my life story here at this point. I do think it is important to mention that I'm but a mere sophomore at RISD, so I am constantly changing and evolving with no set style and I am in no rush to find it.